Monday, September 26, 2011

So now I need to talk about the propoganda and faulty logic in the Declaration of Independence. I would say that most of the document is a very accurate depiction of how England treated America, with few exceptions. I can actually remember reading about several events in the Declaration that were mentioned as wrong doings by the crown. I also noticed that although there were several parts with rather violent language, that most of the document was fairly mild mannered. You would think that a document starting a revolution would be a little more violent and distressing, but I guess that must not have been Jefferson's style because this read more like a documentary list that a passionate vehement one. That being said, I do believe that Thomas Jefferson did exaggerate in a few points when he was writing in his more dramatic style.

At one point Thomas Jefferson accuses the English having "abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war on us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people" (Jefferson 124). I know that America was in the middle of the Revolutionary War at the time this was written, but even so the language may be a little bit melodramatic. Even though many people died in the Revolutionary War, I still think that it is a pretty big stretch to make the generalization the king ruined the lives of the American people. Other than that, I think that if you were to ask Thomas Jefferson to give an example of an any even that he accuses the king of doing, he would easily be able too. The real issue between America and England was caused by Parliment trying to control the American assemblies, but the king's rude insolence was apparently much easier to attack than that of Parliment.

I think that other than that specific example in the Declaration of Independence, I think that it is a very reasonable document. Without taking the Revolutionary War into account, it does sound really dramatic and a bit unfounded and unreasonable. But when you remember that they were in the middle of a war, and the King George III had gotten entirely rid of the local representative governments and gave their power to his governors. I can understand completely why the American people would be outraged enough to start a revolution. All things considered, I was really surprised at the tone of the declaration. It was not as self-righteous as I thought it would be, and considering that the declaration was starting a revolution, I thought it was really pretty mildly put. I think that it was a really good example of writing in the rationalist period because it really put reason and rationality in front of emotion. There was a bit of emotion in the Declaration of Independence, but it really was mostly based on reason. I think that it is a very good thing that our government was founded on reason, because governments founded on emotion tend not to be very stable.

I do not think that you should postpone the vocabulary assignment until Wednesday. What kind of class would this be if we could always persuade you to change your plans every time we did not want to do an assignment? We would never get anything done if that was the case, and this class would be eighty minutes of waste. Nearly none of our instructors let us influence the plan of their classes, and the ones that do are viewed as push-overs or lazy teachers by their students. Besides that, it would get us out of the habit of having vocabulary to do every night, which would make it harder to remember to get it done on nights when we do have homework.

I also think that vocabulary is a good thing to work on several times a week. In an argument I recently had with a freshman, the poor girl had to ask me what every other word out of my mouth meant. Either this girl was especially ignorant, or the students of Pleasant Plains could really use some more time spent on studying vocabulary. This freshman sounded horribly ignorant having to ask me what I was saying all of the time, and I think that it would help her later in life a good deal if she learned the meaning of more words. Let's face it, no one is going to want to hire a person who does not understand what they are being told to do.

In general putting things off until the future is a really bad idea. Soon things fall far behind, and we have to cram as much possible into a very short amount of time, and because of that we learn less of it. Even if it does not come to running so far behind, it still gets a person in the bad habit of putting things off. Once that habit is formed, it can be hard to break when something important and time consuming needs to be done.

I think that putting off the vocabulary homework is a bad idea, and that we should really just get it done tonight.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Patrick Henry's speech uses a lot of typical rationalist style in it. He appeals to listeners reason and intelligence, and a good deal to their emotions too. The reader can really tell how much the issue matters to Patrick Henry because he works so hard to make his point, and if someone else cares so much about this issue, it makes the person who reads about it care a lot more too. I think that the rationalist style is really what made Patrick Henry's speech so moving.

One thing that is very apparent in his speech is his use of reason to bring people to his line of thought. When he talks about all of the English soldiers in America he makes a very good point. A person may not really think about it at first, but Patrick Henry asks what could the soldiers really be there for except to force the Americans into doing what the king wanted (Henry 117). For any given action, the motives are not often very much considered (except in national politics and in relationships, where it seems that the only thing that really matters is the motive behind the action). Patrick Henry also makes a really good point when he is convincing the colonists not to wait to fight. He asks whether the colonies will get stronger or weaker with waiting around for the English to do something really enraging and dastardly (Henry 118). This probably made the delegates give another thought or two to their own opinions.

Despite all of his appeals to reason, Patrick Henry uses every sentence and every noun, verb, and adjective to appeal to the other delegates' emotions. He uses really harsh words and the imagery in the speech makes the English out to be suspicious people who would force the colonists into doing something harmful without listening to the colonists input. It is no wonder that with an impression like this the colonists would want very much to fight for their independence. I would not like living under such a government either. The mixture of Rationalism and emotion makes me think of Deism. Deism was a religion, and yet a good many rationalists were Deists. Despite how wonderful and perfect reason is, we are all still humans, and thus we all have emotions. It is impossible to have reason with no emotion. Religion is a very emotional thing, so it does not surprise me that the rationalists had a religion, and likewise that emotion plays a role in this rational argument.

I think that Patrick Henry and others who reasoned like him must have played a huge role in the American revolution. In history class we talked about how the Americans felt very English themselves after the Seven Years War, so it must have taken so very good solid reasoning to get the popular support for the revolution. Over all I think that the rationalists were solid people and that Deism has quite a bit of merit to it, and if I was not so darn Catholic I would probably consider looking into it a lot more than I already have.

Here follows the tale of a cluttered heart.Once several days ago there was a girl with a very cluttered heart. There were so many people she cared about, and soon her attachments grew too strong and consuming for her poor icy heart. She found that each look they gave her had meaning, and in that meaning she hoped was a sign that those who gave it too had meaning (which was really rather foolish, if you ask me, but then again, cold though her heart was she still had hope hidden away in one of its warmer recesses). Before she knew what had happened she grew fond of each pair of eyes, and especially hopeful that the world need not be filled with cold people such as herself. She thought back to an old verse "If my eyes are the windows to my soul, then is my face the wall that keeps it hidden?" and wondered how much truth to it there really was.

Soon she found problems where there were none before. Easy and wonderful though it would seem to care about so many people, she found herself pulled in far too many directions, and all at once. Some people she gave attention they did not warrant, and some who deserved her time were neglected. This poor girl had a very strong idea about what was fair, and she knew that it was not possible to give everyone what they deserved if she was always giving her thoughts to people who did not deserve them. Some people had only recently acquired her attention, and as they ever gave her nothing but hope, she let them fall from her mind. Hope is a wonderful thing, but one cannot live on hope alone. One person had once meant the world to her, and made her frigid heart burn. She let him too slide from her mind. Though he was once something great, the years had changed him, forever not for better.

Thus the frigid girl was left only with the people who had held her up when she needed it, those who had saved her from that crippling hypothermia that grew inside her soul. Thus she found her heart begin to thaw when he looked into her eyes, and thus she found true hope.

Friday, September 16, 2011

What weather is there that compares to the fall? Warm sun and cool, fresh wind make it ideal for singing in parks. The warm days are like the tail end of summer, and they remind you to mourn for the lost freedom you had during that season. The cool days are like pure caffeine, and all you want to do is run and sing and all find the different fall flowers as you go. When I walk in the summer, I perpetually pick the flowers as I pass them, and compose verses about how wonderful everything seems. In the fall the flowers are more rare, and far more fine for their rarity. The cool air and chilling wind turn the wheels of my mind faster and much better than the balmy days of summer do, so the verses are a thousand time more joyful or sad than they were during the summer. On some days the wind carries in it a small taste of the coming winter, and the taste of the wind is clean and bright, and my lungs tighten and sting with the shock of it.

And then even the fall starts to fail, and the tall Illinois grass dies. The leaves that burnt bright red and yellow on their trees burn in piles on the ground. The crisp taste the wind had in the fall is replaced by the harsher one of the coming winter. Instead of the soft touch of the wind, the air hits my skin like a smack in the face. Despite how much I love the fall, the coming winter excites me. It is the promise of a coming challenge, and the promise of something to fight against. How easy would it be to let the winter steal my joy, and wait glumly for spring? I think it is far harder to keep such happiness alive in the cold darkness of winter. Last year the five month winter got the better of me, and by the end I was having trouble remembering what the trees looked like with leaves on them. This year, you can call me Fredrick if I let the coldness beat me so easily.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

I suppose that if I think and type long enough I could come up with some things that are the same between Jonathan Edwards' "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" and The Crucible. A few of the characters in the play remind me of Jonathan Edwards, and the message those characters are constantly spouting is very similar to Jonathan Edwards'. Perhaps you might have noticed that I am none too fond of such characters, but if you have not then you probably will by the time you finish reading this.

Mr. Parris especially makes me think about Jonathan Edwards. In the first act Mr. Procter talks about how Mr. Parris is always preaching about fire and brimstone and how the unfaithful will go to hell (Miller 28-29). Jonathan Edwards' entire sermon was to that effect, so it is very easy to draw a parallel between the two (Edwards 97-99). I know I should be more tolerant, or something, but I really have trouble putting up with people who always talk about the bad side of things. I know that it is important to consider the consequences of the things you do, but for God's sake do you really need someone nagging at you all of the time like your step mother? It is no wonder that there is a faction in the play that does not like Mr. Parris. I would not like a person like that either.

I can also see similarities in the things they talk about and their priorities. It seems like a big priority to both of them is avoiding God's wrath. They do not really talk about the things a person can do to please the lord, they just want to be not sent directly to hell. I think that most of the reason for there violent phrases is that they want to keep their power and keep the support of the people who pay them. I can see that the message of getting people all worried about their eternal souls would be a bit more profitable than letting the parishioners stop attending church. In the play it is really obvious that Mr. Parris is trying to further the conviction of witches because it makes people afraid of the devil and sends them back to church. I am not truly certain if this was what motivated Jonathan Edwards or not, but I would not be surprised it if was.

Anyway, I can see a lot in common between Jonathan Edwards and Mr. Parris. The parts I had to read concerning both people annoyed me quite a bit. I guess I just do not like people who preach in general. Ask me questions, make me think about it, but do not tell me what I should think and what I should fear. It makes me very frustrated. I also wonder what motives those preachy people have. Why does it matter to them how I feel about things? I really do not think that it should. It just makes me feel very bad in general.

I am not really sure that bullying is really the big deal that people make it out to be. Some people are always going to try pushing other people around, and even though it is really rude, things like that do not ever change. Bullying does effect people, but sometimes it is for the better.

When I was a young wee lass, first at Pleasant Plains, people made fun of me. I can understand why because I was strange and very naive, and for quite a while I did not even realize that they were making fun of me. I can not remember when, but at some point I discovered that they were making fun of me, and back then I actually cared about what people though of me, so I was really upset. For quite a while I thought back to that and thought it was the most horrible and embarrassing thing ever in my entire life. More recently, I can look back and see that because those people were so awful to me, I learned some of the more important social rules of school. Besides that, when they persisted teasing me after I realized what they were doing, I learned how to restrain my temper (because they would have kept at me longer if I had done something interesting like that) and answer them in a way that did not make me look foolish. It may sound cheesy, but having to put up with their insulting comments made me a stronger person.

That is not to say that there are no scars left over. They teased me by talking to me condescendingly, and cheering for me like I was some sort of fool who did not understand what was going on around them and needed encouragement for everything. Sometimes, like during track practice, when people are cheering for me when I am very far behind everyone (because I am always very far behind everyone) I get very mad. Even though them members of the track team genuinely want me to do well and are not making fun of me, I still slip into the mind set that they are. Because those idiotic kids made fun of me I can not handle it when peoeple try to compliment or encourage me.

Bullying had positive and negative effects, but for me I think that the good out weighs the bad.

Monday, September 12, 2011

Human nature is the driving force in The Crucible. All of the conflicts in the play have to do with the little problems people have with each other and with themselves. Jealousy, being unfaithful, and guilt all play roles in the main conflict. Another part of human nature that influences the plot is not wanting to get in trouble and using a situation to the most advantage possible.

Jealousy plays a huge part in the witch trials of the play. Elizabeth Proctor is accused by Abigail because Abigail is jealous of her husband (Miller 74). Abigail wants to be John Proctor's wife, so she accuses Elizabeth of being a witch in an attempt to get her hung so she can marry John. She must be either really jealous or really inconsiderate to want to murder someone to get what they have.

Faithlessness also plays a part in the plot. Sometimes we all do stupid things that we are bound to be made miserable by. John Proctor has the same problem. He cheated on his wife with Abigail, and Abigail decided she was in love with him. Then Abigail decided to try to kill his wife (Miller 74). Obviously getting involved with Abigail was a bad idea. Because of his cheating ways his family got in a whole lot of trouble. Besides the obvious consequences, because Proctor cheated on his wife, he starts to loose his self esteem.

By the end of the play he considers lying to save himself because he does not feel like he deserves to be martyred for his honesty (Miller136). He thinks he is so worthless that it does not matter if he lies to save himself. His guilt made him feel completely horrible by the end of the play. Guilt is a pretty common part of human nature because we all have ideas about what is right, and for the most part we all take care to do the right thing as much as possible.

Abigail blames everyone possible for her behavior in an attempt to avoid trouble. She really does not want to get in trouble, so she is willing to shift the blame to anyone else possible. Again, she must be really inconsiderate, because that is really rude.

Abigail uses the witch trials she created to the most advantage possible. She puts the people that annoy her in prison and on trial. She even tries to get her lover's wife hung. Everyone will try to get the most out of a favorable situation, however, not everyone is quite so ruthless about it.

A lot of bad things can happen when a person is blamed for something they did not do. The most obvious one is that an innocent person may be punished. That is not a good thing. No one likes to be punished, but it is especially bad when the punishment is undeserved. Besides that, a perfectly happy person that gets blamed for something they did not do gets bitter. Even if the event does not merit punishment, the innocent person feels like they have been wrongly persecuted, and that is enough to ruin anyone's cheerful disposition. Not to mention that wrongly blaming someone can ruin a friendship. If my best friend blamed something bad on me, it is likely that I would be pretty upset at him until he apologized or until I got really bored. If he thought I was responsible for some bad happening, it is also quite possible that he would be upset with me, and over something I had not even done. Luckily such a situation has not occurred, so I will end this line of thought before I jinx it.

Another bad consequence of wrongly blaming someone is that the wrongly blamed someone may carry a bit of a grudge. For instance, a merely hypothetical example, when your little sister draws on the wall with crayon and blames you. You see, that is the kind of blame that sticks with a person, even though you little sister was only around three at the time. By purely hypothetical, I really meant actual example that really happened and that I still have not forgotten. But I do see how you could get the two confused.

So, as you see, blaming the wrong people is bad. Especially when you only blame one person, because that is just not fair. Thus you should blame everyone equally for everything bad that happens. Just kidding. That would be bad too. instead, you should refrain from blaming people until you are absolutely sure they have done what ever it is that is in question.

Thursday, September 8, 2011

I never really considered the color coded characters much after Mr. Tadla's class, but I guess they make enough sense. When I come to think of the most important characters in the play within the context of happy little colors, it seems clear enough to me.

I would say that Abigail is probably orange. Orange people are most interested in being active and having a good time. She danced at night with other girls at a heathen ceremony because it seemed like it would be fun and entertaining (Miller 11). This shows that she was more concerned with having a good time than with her family (whose reputation she put in jeopardy), the rules (which she clearly broke), or much of anything else. She seems very uninclined toward learning, so that definitely rules out green. I think that she is really just a very immature orange type. Well, maybe immature is the wrong word for her. Perhaps vile or evil work better?

Proctor is gold, I think. Golds are typically very family centered and organized. He is willing to soil his own reputation in order to save his wife, showing how much he cares about her (Miller 80). People with gold personalities often care a great deal about their families. Mr. Langley said that golds will act more like blues when they are under stress, and perhaps Proctor was under a lot of stress with his wife when he had his affair with Abigail, because having a lover seems more like a blue sort of thing to do than a gold kind of thing, blues being the type of people who care most about relationships with other people (Langley). If he were really a blue, I doubt he would be putting Abigail on ice as well as he has by this part of the play. The play mentions that he has a sort of moral superiority about him, and this is keeping with a gold personality as well (Miller 20).

I think that Rebecca has a blue personality. Even though she has not really said much so far in the play, every time she speaks her words have a comforting about them. She really cares about Betty and her illness when she is in the first act, even though she knows that Betty had been out dancing in the middle of the night (Miller 39). When in the second act it mentions that she was arrested, the reader cannot but feel sympathy and worry for the kind old woman.

I think the Putnams are a little harder to place. They are very calculating about how best to get their revenge on people who they feel have done them wrong. I am not sure if this would be more green or more orange because of how hard they work at their schemes. On one hand, their schemes revolve around who they think has done their family wrong in some circumstances, like when due to some neighbors a family member of theirs was not allowed to be minister (Miller 15). On the other hand, some of their plots are sheerly about economic gain, like when they have a man accused of witchery so they can gain his land (even though I was not supposed to read that yet). Anyway, I think the Putnams are a very close call between green and gold.

I think that taking away technology is a very good punishment for today's youth. A lot of people I know are entirely dependent on cell phones and computers, and when they are taken away the lament on how their entire life is over. I think that because of this kids will be less likely to act poorly if their technology is taken away.

My very good example of this is how my little sister had to deal with such a punishment. A few years ago her and my dad were in the middle of a series of all out battles that I like to term "World War III". Dani would ask to do something with her friends, and if she did not get it she would argue and fight for hours to get her way. It was a pretty nasty time, considering my dad does not have the most even temper. Anyway, when my dad got angry enough (and that was a rather frightening thing to behold) he would take away Dani's cell phone. Dani would completely loose it. I mean really loose it. This went on for a while (a little too long in my opinion), but after a while Dani learned to keep her mouth shut and stopped fighting with dad all of the time. Dani took it very hard, but after a while she really learned from her punishment.

I guess the taking away of the phone and other technology does not work for everyone. When I get in trouble my parents think taking away my ipod and phone will have the same effect as it does on Dani. It does not. I have very little interest in my technology, and when it gets taken away I do not even miss it. One night I got in trouble for sneaking out. I still maintain that I was only taking a walk, but even so all of my electronic devices were taken away for a week. I missed them so little that my mom decided to give them back to me two days early, seeing that their lack had no effect on me.

I think that I am the exception rather than the rule, and that taking away technology is a very good punishment for today's teens.

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

The longest I have ever been away from home was this summer, when I took a week long trip to Florida followed closely by another week long trip to New Providence island. Between the two trips, I only had two days home.

In Florida, three other people and myself were housed in a tiny apartment. Despite the beautiful beaches and wonderful weather, I had begun to hate my family, after all, they had made me sleep on the couch the last four nights. I decided to read my favorite book because on top of the familial hatred I was feeling, I had started to feel normal and ordinary, and that was just too much for me to handle. After readiing that favorite book of mine, I felt wonderful again. I called a good friend of mine that evening and spent hours on the phone with him.

The next day it rained. It was a horrible thunderstorm, so me and the rest of my family decided to stay inside. That did not last very long. Within a couple hours I got so sick of them that I decided to take a walk. The wind drove the rain against my skin, and stung my arms and face. That made me smile. I walked down to the pier, and on the way back I started to sing. To my horror, my voice cracked and wailed, and kept a pitch as well as the ocean was keeping flat. I had been on a song writing strike for so long, my voice had decided to stop working.

A few days later, in the Bahamas, I was again reading my favorite book. I had bought a copy of it for that dear friend of mine, and was marking all of my favorite parts in it. Again my voice was lifted to sing, and again it tormented my ears with the comparison of how it was and how it had been only months ago. Instead of the joyful song I had started, I sang those wonderful words in the most broken hearted blues my voice could make. I was homesick, and feeling like there was nothing special about myself at all. The two of these put together were enough to make me feel that all the world was horrible. And with such feeling in my heart my pitch evened out and my tone became as pain without the jagged edges.

Though I still find myself on a song strike, my long time from home helped me keep my voice from waning completely.

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Bradford's writing is very typical of the time period. In fact, it fits so well that I am beginning to wonder if these examples of early American literature were specifically picked out to make a point, or if the style really was that consistent.

The first passage in the book by Bradford shows how most people attributed the events that happened in life to God. He writes about a young man who was making fun of all the people who will die on the boat ride, when he himself is the first to get sick and die (Bradford 15). In the second passage in the book, Bradford talks about how it was God's will that a sailor was saved (Bradford 64). Even though Bradford was a Pilgrim instead of a Puritan, his writing still had references to God's influence in events.

Another Puritan quality that Bradford's writing had was that unadorned style. With some writers, reading their prose is like to reading poetry, but such is not he case with Puritan style writing. Bradford's work is very plain, and in my opinion the stark honesty in Bradford's writing is not nearly as charming as that in the stories we read earlier this week. That is not to say that I found the writing bad, in fact I rather liked it when he wrote about how the healthy people took care of the sick people.

He even makes references to scripture in his writing, a very Puritan quality. When he talks about how the Pilgrims landed in America, he mentions how some apostles were received in a foreign land (Bradford 65). Most Puritan writing has a lot of references to the bible in it, and so does Bradford's writing. All of the references to the bible really make me think about how little of it that I have actually heard about. I had never heard anything about the story Bradford mentioned in his story. I guess people during that era knew their bibles a lot better than people do now.

Thursday, September 1, 2011

The Crucible, despite being written in the nineteen fifties, has quite a few characteristics of Puritan writings about it. First of all, the sentence style is very much puritan sounding in the narration. The author uses fairly short, declarative sentences with little extra in them to add much flavor. This can be seen very well in the beginning narration, and especially in the following passage.

The edge of the wilderness was close by. The American continent stretched endlessly west, and it was full of mystery for them. It stood, dark and threatening, over their shoulders night and day, for out of it Indian tribes marauded from time to time, and Reverend Parris had parishioners who had lost relatives to these heathen. (Miller 5)

Though the phrase "dark and threatening" probably would have been omitted if the play were written by an actual Puritan, the lack of drama and passion when talking about Indian killings certainly savors strongly of Puritan.

Another Puritan quality in the writing is the many references to religion. The main difference in the play and Puritan writing is who the characters reference when they talk. In Puritan writings, God is talked about in every aspect of every event. In The Crucible, the devil is the constant religious figure being referenced and talked about. Although the story is centered around accused demonic encounters, were it written by a Puritan it would have a thousand time more references to God himself.

One thing that shows how the Puritan faith was declining was that all of Reverend Parris' sermons were about the impending doom awaiting in hell for the faithless. Mr. Proctor says "I have trouble enough without I come five mile to hear him preach only hellfire and bloody damnation. Take it to heart, Mr. Parris. There are many others who stay away from church these days because you hardly ever mention God anymore (Miller 29)." When the Puritan faith was declining, the preachers tried to pull their parishioners back by scaring them with such speeches of hell. I am really not surprised that that did not work, because no one really wants to be told they are going to hell. You catch more flies with sugar than with vinegar.

Another sign of declining faith in the region was that even though Procter did not go to church often at all, he was still a very respected member of the community. In the old Massachusetts theocracy, people such as Roger Williams were exiled for a difference in belief. In the days of the Salem witch trials, faith must have waned a great deal for such absence from church to make so little difference.

Overall I think that The Crucible is a very good example of Puritan writing even though it was written much later than that period. I think that a lot of it is different than Puritan writing, especially in all of the details in the author's descriptions, but that for the most part it is very close.

What would I do if I were held hostage? I have never thought about it before, but I wonder if anyone would even dare take me as a hostage. I would undoubtedly be horrible at it. In fact, it would be more tempting to laugh at them than cringe in fear. If it was a situation like Mary Rowlandson's, I would probably end up causing more problems for the people who were in charge of me than I could be of use. I do not learn how to do new things very well, and when I walk I am like a small force of destruction causing injury to myself and any others within a ten foot radius. After a week my captors would be begging me to leave.

I wonder how my captors would treat me. I am not easily scared, because I am convinced that the only way I could possibly die is in a car accident. As you would imagine, driving places makes me a little uncomfortable. But unless they made me drive them places, I doubt I would be very much afraid. Perhaps my total lack of fear would make them hate me, and let me go even before I destroy everything in a week. Or maybe it would make them like me enough to wait a week and a half before getting rid of me. I suppose it would depend on the kind of people they were, and whether they were really wicked (I rather like that word), or just ignorant and misled.

I am having a lot more fun considering how horrible the situation would be than I initially thought I would. My captors would think they were making things horrible for me, and in reality it would be them who would be pulling their hair out. Insert evil laugh here. Maybe if they kept me an entire month I could accidentally destroy the building I was staying in. Those poor kidnappers, they would have no idea what they would be in for.